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Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Bigfoot Investigations - The One Huge Way We Can Advance The Research?

How can we advance Bigfoot Research?

This Post By TCC Team Member Dorraine Fisher. Dorraine is a Professional Writer, a nature, wildlife and Bigfoot enthusiast who has written for many magazines. Dorraine conducts research, special interviews and more for The Crypto Crew. Get Dorraine's book The Book Of Blackthorne!

Bigfoot InvestigationsThe One Huge Way We Can Advance The Research?By Dorraine Fisher

Bigfoot research sometimes seems to come to a stalemate. We learn a lot, and then one day, it all stops for a while. How can we keep the momentum going and keep learning more and more? The answer is simple…and yet complicated at the same time. It involves the inner workings of the human mind. Yes, that’s right. Our brains are the problem. But the good news is they don’t have to be.

Advances in neuroscience have moved leaps and bounds in the last ten years. Scientists are really beginning to unlock the secrets of the brain that have eluded us for so long. But the more we learn, the more it becomes apparent how flawed our brains really are. Or are they?

The great thing about the human brain is if it knows the problem, it can overcome it.
But then that brings up the question: what actually is the problem?

Arguably, the single greatest flaw in human minds is when we think we know something already, we have a hard time wrapping our mind around any different idea that deviates from that. It first requires us to come to the conclusion we may have been wrong before, and it requires us to accept a whole new idea that is at first uncomfortable and somewhat unfamiliar. Scientists are required to do this fairly often, but they also have trouble with it.

That’s because your human brain automatically looks for something familiar in everything it sees. So if we see something unusual, we have a hard time processing it simply because our brains are designed that way. We try to relate everything we see to something we’ve seen before. And in the world of the paranormal and cryptids, this can be a huge problem. Since we can only speculate much of the time on these subjects, our minds need to be wide open to different possibilities. Because there are so many…and we need to remember that.

But how does this relate to bigfoot research?

We need to change the way we think about everything. And there are no better people to learn this first than bigfoot researchers. Since we’re always looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack, we’re more used to rethinking things. But we need to get even better at it.

I know I’ve said this before, but after years of analogies about ducks, we need to ditch this one: “If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.” Probably does not mean definitely. And if there’s any possibility it’s something else, we need to acknowledge that.

No one made this point better than paranormal researcher, Sharon Day, author of Ghost Hunting Theories, when she spoke about dog man sightings and how people process what they’ve seen, and how it often sparks hot debate.

“Oh yes. I would say this, "We get caught up in Dogman looking like a dog because that's our comparison for something hair covered and having a snout shape to the foreface. We did the same thing with Bigfoot, calling it ape because we had no reference to something hair covered and upright. We need to expand our research, removing the "canine" reference and look to real world explanations for the origins of something that appears like this creature.

Sharon will be elaborating on that in her blog in the near future. But can you see where this is going? Just because a creature looks like a dog, howls at night, and eats meat, does not mean it’s a canine. The term “dogman” is nothing more than a description of a creature that resembles a dog. It may actually be something completely different that we have yet to discover.

The only way to take the research farther than it’s ever gone is to change our own minds. Be prepared to say we might be wrong, and accept the idea of other possibilities. In essence, don’t believe everything you think. Because in the world of cryptids, we all might be wrong about a lot of things.

Also, just because something hasn’t been proved, doesn’t mean it’s impossible. It might very well be possible…even in a context none of us understands yet. There are many things we can’t conceive of because we have no experience of them. Does that mean they never happen or don’t exist? None of us really knows for sure. All of us would like to be an expert on the subject of Bigfoot, but no one really is. Once we think we have all the answers, we stop looking for any new information and we shut down the conversation and won’t listen to another idea. That is a tragedy for research. Even renowned physicist, Stephen Hawking, one of the greatest minds of our generation, admits that he’d rather advance his understanding of the universe rather than protect his own ego by holding on to old, outdated ideas. That’s what we have to keep in mind when we’re trying to unlock any mystery.

So, there are great opportunities to put this into practice. Bigfoot researchers have the greatest opportunities to become some of the most open minds of our generation; great out-of-the-box thinkers. It’s imperative…when none of us knows exactly what we’re dealing with. Being completely objective should be number one on our long list of the skills it takes to find elusive creatures. And just a small adjustment to our mindset can certainly bring us closer to it.
*******DF

[Special Thanks to: Sharon Day and David Lynn Lambert for their insights]